L. Todd Masco:
The american people keep claiming in polls that they want better privacy protection, but the fact is that most aren't willing to do anything about it: it's just a preference, not a solid imperative.
Most customers want more privacy, but when you think about it, there is not a whole hell of a lot they can do about it right now. If they want to get the status and flexibility of a credit card, they need to give up their privacy. Nobody has tried to give them a private alternative. For that matter, no one has shown people at a gut level, as a good ad could do, what the consequences of loss of privacy are. At this point Duncan Frissel will regail us with some wonderful scheme, understandable only to lawyers, that can be used to get credit cards under aliases, perfectly legal if you use a doubly nested corporate structure going through Aruba and the Caymans, and the IRS and FBI don't decide to get to get you on some technicality Duncan failed to mention. I won't comment on why most consumers have neglected that option. What I'm talking about is a digital cash system that is as easy for the consumer as an identified debit card. We can do that with today's technology. The traffic level on this list is proof that there are plenty of people who care about privacy. The surprisingly large number of folks who actually do go to Frissell style lengths is proof that there are plenty of peope who care about privacy. Once we have learned what the problems and solutions are, we are willing to go to a significant amount of effort or inconvenience to get it. The real problem is, these polls are not well publicized, are geared towards political rather than business solutions, and haven't sunk through to the people in the product R&D and marketing departments. Exacerbating this, some organizations (such as American Express) make a lot of money off their free treasure trove of transaction information, and are using lots of FUD to keep privacy enhanced alternatives off the market. A dramatic, Apple-style ad portraying Visa and MasterCard as Big Brother may be what is needed to get over the apathy hurdle. There are plenty of credit card privacy horror stories we could publicize. Think of what could be accomplished these days with an infomercial. But this takes at least one excited organization with marketing clout to do it. Meanwhile, smart card based digital cash trials, supported by a large bank, are going on in Britain. There are major markets for both customers and vendors that don't have access to the credit card system, as well as customers who care about privacy. This is not a fringe technology; its possibilities just haven't sunk in yet. Jim Hart hart@chaos.bsu.edu